


Blot out the Sun

by AkumaStrife



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, angel!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:23:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkumaStrife/pseuds/AkumaStrife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment he reminds you of something from long ago, a phrase your mother would use while fingering the cross around her neck.</p>
<p>You try to forget the comparison, but it’s all you can think about when he looks up at you from the ground and you’re struck with the strange feeling that it should be the other way around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blot out the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the myriad of lovely Angel!Sam fanart over on tumblr.

You don’t notice him at first; too consumed with your own nightmares spurring you along desperately, as if maybe you could outrun the rising sun. 

But you do. How can you not when he’s lit by a halo of golden light like something cliché? For a moment he reminds you of something from long ago, a phrase your mother would use while fingering the cross around her neck.

You try to forget the comparison, but it’s all you can think about when he looks up at you from the ground and you’re struck with the strange feeling that it should be the other way around. 

* * *

“It’s like all I was meant to do was watch.” He doesn’t continue, but you hear it anyways. You hear it in the slant of his mouth and the deep line between his eyes like the grand canyon. 

_I was being punished._

You don’t understand how someone so kind and gracious, someone who cares so deeply, could be punished so harshly. How someone who dedicates their life to healing could’ve ever done something so heinous to be punished and cast out.

But that’s ridiculous.

Sam is merely a man. A man who stands before you, open and gentle, offering his painful past in order to coax out your own. You see it for what it is—you’re not as naive as people like to think—but it’s appreciated all the same. 

“You happy now? Back in the world?”

He glances off to the side with a halfhearted laugh; a joke you’re not privy to. “No one bossin’ me around, hell yeah.”

Sam is painfully mundane and unassuming, and yet you wonder  _how_  he can be like this. Like something that doesn’t exist on the same frequency, a strange man-shaped void amidst the screaming chaos of life. Maybe that’s why you keep finding your thoughts drawn back to him. Why you’re here now, instead of one of the other Avengers, or another agent;  _anyone_  else who you’ve meet more than once. 

He asks about your plans for the future and you ignore the urge to ask if they include him.

He asks what makes you happy and almost against your will they spring to mind: sketching at dawn, dance halls, hot popcorn. Bucky’s smiles. Your mother. 

Sam smiles too. Softly, patiently. As if at your own memories, as if they are not for you, but triggered so he could flip through them like a faded scrapbook.

But that’s ridiculous.

Sam is just a man. 

A man who cancels noise and pushes back the darkness and speaks of a fallen partner as if Icarus still in love with the sun that rebuked him. 

* * *

“I’m sorry about this, but we need a place to lay low.”

Natasha doesn’t understand why him, you can feel the wariness coming off her tense shoulders in waves, but she’s trusting you for now. It’s a start. She just says, “Everyone we know is trying to kill us.” It’s phrased awkwardly, a little flat, like in her head she was going to spin it as a joke, but wanted to take it back the moment she started. 

You don’t add that you’re here now because you have a feeling he knows what that’s like. 

It’s a hunch, and you’ve long since learned to follow them. 

He looks between you and her, and then settles his gaze back on you with the weight of everything unspoken. “Not everyone.”

* * *

He throws a folder on the table and when you open it your heart lurches. For a moment you can’t breathe. Natasha is talking; distantly you can hear her talking and asking questions and you know you should too, but all you can do is stare in abject horror at the jetpack.  _At his wings._

“Is this Riley?” you ask. It’s not what you meant to say, not even close to what you wanted to say, but it’s all that comes out.  _Is this the one? The one you_ fell _for?_ You try again but still it doesn’t come out quite right—something is keeping you from saying it. “I thought you said you were a pilot?”

“I never said pilot.” He looks at you like he can read the words lodged in your throat.  

“I can’t ask you to do this, you got out for a good reason.” 

“Dude, Captain America needs my help, there’s no better reason to get back in.”

You wonder if it really is for you, or if he just wants the chance to fly again. 

* * *

He is devastatingly beautiful. He looks complete, now, in a way that never occurred to you before that he  _wasn’t_. He looks whole and nothing short of radiant; startlingly like divine vengeance. 

Free. 

For a heart-stopping second he seems to be on fire, but then you blink and it’s just the sun reflecting off his wings. Watching him makes your ears buzz faintly. 

* * *

Sam blinks slowly just outside your immediate line of sight. Blinks what looks like seven eyes and you try not to make a scene of how you turn your head to look at him—like dozens of times before. He glances back in the way that people do when they sense they are being watched, his two eyes blinking. Just two.

Two eyes regarding you curiously with a head tilt that feels too mechanical. Too birdlike. Inhuman. 

The bird comparison would make you laugh, but it doesn’t. Not anymore. 

You’ve seen Sam Wilson with wings and they’re so natural on him it almost makes you sick. As if you’re witnessing something forbidden and taboo. 

* * *

“He’s gonna be there, you know.”

“I know.”

“Whoever he used to be, I don’t think he’s the kind you save, he’s the kind you stop.”

You don’t say,  _‘Like you? What about you, Sam?’,_ but instead, “I don’t know if I can do that.” Because you don’t. You don’t know anything, not really. You’re probably wrong about Sam, too. About who— _what—_ he is. You can’t be sure of anything anymore, not even Bucky. Even when you had nothing you had Bucky. Now you’re just chasing the shadow of a darkened man like ink-stained photographs. 

As if reading your mind Sam says, “He might not give you the choice. He doesn’t know you.”

You don’t like the way he says it; it sounds too much like choosing. Too final. You look at him. “He will.”  Even when you had nothing you had Bucky. You repeat this to yourself over and over until you believe it again. 

* * *

“How many?”

He turns to you, head tilted. Considering. Gaze sharp. You look back, undaunted, eyes roaming over his form.  _Form_. Not body. The term is both foreign and incredibly fitting. 

“How many what?”

You glance at his jetpack. Sam stands like he’s overcompensating for some invisible weight. Feet planted firmly like he may leave the ground if he’s not paying attention; back straight, but shoulders curled forward the slightest bit.  

“Never mind. Forget I asked.”

“You didn’t really ask anything,” Sam says, chuckling. His smile turns into a quirk of lips that’s better described as  _knowing_  and  _amused_. But he looks like that a lot—like he knows things. Lots of things. Things he shouldn’t. Perhaps all things. 

You shake your head and wonder how exactly you’re supposed to ask someone if they have more wings than the ones they strap on. And why you’ve never seen him actually power up the wings he does have; the fumes smelling of incense and myrrh and somehow razed villages. 

* * *

“Hey Cap, how do we know the good guys from the bad?”

“If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad.” You expect a sarcastic retort, the light banter you’re comfortable with, but it never comes. He just looks conflicted, like it’s so simple yet never occurred to him. He looks at you the same way you’ve caught him watching the sky.

You won’t ask what happened  _Before_ , but you wonder how long he’s been blaming himself. 

* * *

“Hey, Sam, gonna need a ride.”

“Roger. Lemme know when you’re ready.”

“I just did.” You jump. And fall. Weightless in your faith. It feels like a second chance. 

His hand grabs yours like a jolt, wrenching your whole body; fingers tightening around yours like he feels it too. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.

He’s not speaking to you.


End file.
